By Cal Thomas

America’s annual rituals and observances include days we usually celebrate together (July Fourth, Memorial Day, Veterans Day), or as members of special groups (Passover, Easter and Christmas).

The one annual ritual it can be safely said most Americans despise is April 15, when the half of us who pay federal income taxes must “render unto Caesar” portions of our hard-earned money to a government that wastes much of it and dislikes exposure and accountability. It’s why Elon Musk and his band of DOGE warriors are despised by the Left and the misspenders.

Two constitutional amendments have been especially hated by the public. One was the 16th Amendment that was ratified on Feb. 3, 1913. It granted Congress the authority to impose and collect taxes on income. Before then the government raised money through tariffs (sound familiar?) and excise taxes.

The 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacturing, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors. That amendment was repealed in 1933.

The 16th Amendment remains, allowing Congress to continue its intoxication with our money, bilking those “millionaires and billionaires Democrats love to attack, although some of them are wealthy. How did some become millionaires on low six figure salaries?

The largely indecipherable federal tax code is incredibly complex – so complex that it covers 6,871 pages. If tax regulations are added – the Treasury’s official interpretations of the tax code – the number of pages climbs to 75,000. One needs instructions on the instructions to understand it, which has kept tax accountants in business for decades.

The Internal Revenue Service is only partially to blame for this annual annoyance. Bureaucratic regulators who add to laws passed by Congress, and Congress itself, which grants deductions to some, but not others, are the real culprits. While DOGE is exposing some of the waste, fraud and abuse in government, it won’t be fully stopped until two things happen. First, Americans must rely less on government and more on themselves. Responsible decisions in one’s personal and financial life mostly guarantees that government will be less likely a first resource and more likely a last resort.

Second, the people who have tortured us must be shamed. In Puritan society shaming, or public humiliation, was a common practice. Its purpose was to enforce moral standards and maintain social order. Today, almost nothing is shameful because most standards have been discarded.

Members of Congress, who voted for spending and programs that are now being exposed as unnecessary and wasteful, should have shame heaped upon them. This would include “earmarks,” which is spending by members for favored projects that have not gone through the proper budgetary process. Public shaming might force members to be more responsible with the power and purse they have been given and put the country’s interest ahead of their personal interests, which include re-election.

As I have repeatedly argued, every Cabinet agency and most government programs have been established by a charter or legislative authority. If agencies and programs are achieving their purposes and goals and their work can’t be done less expensively and more efficiently by the private sector, we keep them. If not, we get rid of them. DOGE has begun that process. Simply firing people won’t fully solve the problem. The value and success of these entities must be examined for their cost and efficiency. The ones that are not performing must be shut down, otherwise a new Congress and a new administration could fire them up again and we will be back where we started.

An unhappy tax day to all who pay income taxes.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.

By: Cal Thomas

As a child I frequently visited relatives in southern Indiana. A great uncle tried to keep me from exploring his cellar (as they were called then) by telling me the boogeyman was down there and would “get you” if I descended the stairs. It worked.

Boogeymen are nothing new. They have existed in the form of politicians going back to the founding of the country. See how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams described each other. One politician says if his opponent is elected, or his party gains a majority, the country will be destroyed. The other says the same about the other person and party. That has worked well, especially for Democrats, who for decades have won votes from scared seniors by falsely claiming Republicans want to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The latest boogeyman is Elon Musk. Within my short memory, Musk was hailed as a hero for developing Tesla which was going to save the planet. If you wanted to send a virtue signal, you bought one. Now, if you want to send a virtue signal, you get rid of one, or other virtue signalers will vandalize, even destroy the cars and attack Tesla dealerships.

This is about the Establishment holding onto power and their misspent money, nothing else. Some Democrats, who have no policies other than opposition to President Trump, are trying to recover a level of respectability by agreeing there is waste in government, but they want Congress, not Musk and his DOGE team to cut it. This is known as allowing the people who created the problem to provide the solution, which is not likely to happen.

People who choose to serve their country in the military or in public service when they could be making more money in the private sector were once admired and held up as worthy of emulation. John F. Kennedy encouraged that spirit in his 1961 Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Musk and DOGE are exposing what many Democrats and some Republicans have done to waste our money over decades. “The era of big government is over,” declared President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address. It wasn’t. While Clinton cut 377,000 federal jobs, Presidents Obama and Biden added to the government employment rolls. The federal government is the largest employer in the United States.

On March 27, Musk and some of his DOGE associates were interviewed by Bret Baier of Fox News. Everyone should watch that interview. If you are not outraged by what you hear, you are part of the problem. Here is just one of many examples of the waste and fraud they have uncovered.

Musk: “(fraudsters) steal people’s Social Security … they call in (and) claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money’s flowing. … This is happening all day every day, and then somebody doesn’t receive their Social Security. It’s because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.”

Baier: “How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits?”

Musk: “No. In fact, what we’re doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people as a result of the work of DOGE will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that. As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.”

There are numerous other examples of misspending. Look them up and don’t take what Democrats and much of the media are saying as the truth. It isn’t.

Many members of Congress may give lip service to cutting such misspending, but the question is: will they do anything about it? Those TV ads that try selling us stocks and injury lawyers contain very small print that says: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” With Congress, it seems like it is. They are the boogeymen (and women) in all of this.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).